Garden suggestions?

[farming'stef]

Hello,

It's Springtime and the time has come to start our seedlings. I will be farming in St-Catherine de Hatley and was wondering if anyone had some fun suggestions of vegetables/varieties that I should try growing this year? spices? herbs? fruit?

I tried over 50 varieties of veggies last year and here are some that we liked:

We loved piment d'espelette. It grows well and is a great spice for everything, including desserts!

We tried Montreal Melon, but did not have great results, I will try again this year.

Baby Hubbard squash is amazingly tasty even raw, and keeps all winter long.

Garden Peach yellow tomatoes are medium size fuzzy yellow tomatoes with a sweet but not too acid taste. They grow very well and are beautiful in salades.

Chevril grown in the garden does not compare with the tray grown chevril you buy at the market...same goes for aragula. Chevril is very tasty...rediscover chevril...it's amazing on seafood and in salades...

Red Sails is a great lettuce and has striking red leaves.

...all fresh vegetables from the garden are tasty no matter what you decide to grow...

Cheers,

stef

[wattacetti]

Any kind of heirloom tomatoes. They're always appreciated. Or shiso.

[Kenk]

Fuzzy Melons!!

[blork]

When you say "Chevril grown in the garden does not compare with the tray grown chevril you buy at the market" do you mean the garden-grown is better or worse than the tray-grown?

[riboflavinjoe]

[there exists a w such that for all x and there exists a y such that for all z] (if (If [x=chervil grown in the garden & w=chervil grown in the garden] then x=w) & [if (y=chervil you buy at the market & z=chervil you buy at the market) then y=z] then ~Cxy)

Where Cxy: x compares with y

There was no mention of betterness or worseness involved, as you can see above. I don't know what you're talking about. Simply, it is not the case that x compares to y. sheesh, don't you speak english? okay, i have to go write that philosophy of language paper now.

EDIT: for logical notation corrections

Edited March 29, 2005 by riboflavinjoe (log)

[farming'stef]

The chevril at the market does not taste like the one grown fresh in a garden. Garden chevril has a stronger flavor. If you use it raw, it is very strong, so maybe the market chevril is better for this use. If used cooked on seafood, the market chevril is tastless and so the garden one would be better.

Aragula grown in the garden is very peppery. I prefer this one, but for those who like it mellow, the market aragula would better.

To sum it up, farm(market) vegetables and garden vegetables have different taste...it is up to you to decide which you prefer

Cheers,

stef.

[identifiler]

The chevril at the market does not taste like the one grown fresh in a garden.  Garden chevril has a stronger flavor. If you use it raw, it is very strong, so maybe the market chevril is better for this use.  If used cooked on seafood, the market chevril is tastless and so the garden one would be better.

Aragula grown in the garden is very peppery.  I prefer this one, but for those who like it mellow, the market aragula would better.

To sum it up, farm(market) vegetables and garden vegetables have different taste...it is up to you to decide which you prefer

Cheers,

stef.

←

Just a quick comment here. Market veggies and garden veggies have different tastes for many reasons. First of all, many are grown under Sodium lights in casings containing almost no organic entities or simply a Ph balanced moss support so it tends to be blander. The same can be applied to hydroponic growth.

The idea here is that producers must create growth (output) with as less input as possible in the fastest time to make money... simple concept.

Reguarding Arugula, again, technically speaking, cold grown arugula will have a lot less pepery taste than summer grown arugula. Although the production practices also create a weaker tasting roquette, it is mostly the temperature at which it is grown that is the biggest factor. Arugula should be your first and last series of crop (slightly before winter nitrogen crop) In May and in Late August. The heat of summer will give it a stronger tatse and make it seed too fast. The same rule is applied to Rapini's, in some cases they don't even grow in the summer.

Finally, the Montreal Melon. It is not easy to grow for multiple reasons that are beyon your control. The first being that the seeds have not been fully stabilised genetically yet. Many seeds still grow oblong fruits or unmusked fruits... So it's really a gamble, none withstanding the fact that if you are not facing full sun and have a fairly cold spring like last year, a two feet ditch of fresh manure and plenty of water, it will not rippen properly. A heat dome over the plants is almost required. For that reason, I have turned to other melons. If you have the time though, the one fruit that rippened out of twelve is worth the wait. However, you'll find some very good alternative melon types at solana seeds for example.

[poutine]

We tried Montreal Melon, but did not have great results, I will try again this year.

←

Having always lived in Mtl I now feel quite inadequate for never having heard of Muntreal melons. Can you please enlighten me? Thanks!

[carswell]

Having always lived in Mtl I now feel quite inadequate for never having heard of Muntreal melons.  Can you please enlighten me?  Thanks!

←

It's a celebrated musk melon that was grown in and around present-day NDG in the 1800s and first half of the 1900s. As the city expanded, it was farmed less and less until, finally, it was thought to be extinct. Seeds were located in the mid-1990s and production, on a very limited scale, has been resumed. See Return of the Montreal Melon.

Anyone know if it's ever sold at public markets?

[carswell]

My "garden" these days is in pots on my terrace. I grow mainly herbs that fall into two groups: things I can't easily buy (e.g. lemon verbena, winter savoury, lavender, nasturtium) and things I'm otherwise forced to buy more of than I usually need (e.g. rosemary, thyme, marjoram).

A new herb I'll be trying from seed this year is anise. "Herb" not "spice," because I'll be growing it for the leaves, not the seeds. Fred Plotkin's excellent book on the cooking of northeast Italy, La Terra Fortunata, has a recipe for mussels steamed with anise leaves that I'm anxious to try. Will have a go at shiso, too, provided I can find a plant.

If I had a real garden, I'd focus on fruits and vegetables that are best eaten immediately after harvest (corn, asparagus, peas, berries) or that are hard to find in markets (heirloom tomatoes and potatoes, yellow corn, baby favas, and so on).

Identiflier's right about the Montreal melon. Assuming you've got good seeds, I suspect your biggest problem in the Eastern Townships is degree days. You might try covering the ground around the plants with black plastic sheeting — ugly but it creates a warmer micro-climate. It was the only way we succeded in growing decent okra and watermelons in upstate New York.

[Kenk]

Oh my Montreal Melon seeds sprouted today.

I got them from www.terraedibles.ca.

I got some other tomatos seeds but forgot to buy the lemon cucumber seeds!

[identifiler]

ooohhh, you are going to have some very long snakes by the end of the month.

[Kenk]

For that I got some chinese melons that can grow 2 metres and more. These snakes are more like anacondas. They have started to grow here first real leaves.

When I have grown sweet melons, I have only had limited success, but Weird shaped fruit is part of the fun home gardening.

Who always wants the same shaped melons.

[farming'stef]

A little advice for the melons is try to start the seeds indoors in May, transplant beginning of June. Melons do not like to grow in a pot and when they get too big indoors they have trouble adapting when transplanted. The problem is in the roots, melons have roots like their stems, they crawl far and wide. In a pot the roots curl up and this causes stress to the plant....and everyone knows that stress is bad for health :)

Its better to have a small healthy plant, transplanted into a hot soil. (this is true for any curcubitacea: melon, cucumber, squash)

Hope this helps...

happy growing,

stef.

[Kenk]

Thanks for the advice. Don't worry my place is so cold they will probably be quite small at the end of may.